Blockchain

In a recent blog post, author and international investor Simon Black (aka ‘Sovereign Man’) raised a good point, yet one that is seldom considered:

“Cryptocurrency and Blockchain technology are the final nails in the coffin, making it possible to hold your savings in the cloud rather than at a bank.

And if that seems too esoteric, consider that your savings is already ‘digital currency’.

Banks don’t keep bricks of physical cash in their vaults; your bank balance is nothing more than an accounting entry in your bank’s electronic database.

It just happens to be 100% controlled by your bank.

They can gamble your savings away on some idiotic investment fad, charge you ridiculous fees without your consent, and even freeze you out of your own account (‘for your own security’) or deny you the right to withdraw funds.”

Black is correct. When you hear of the trillions in government bailouts and ‘quantitative easing’, it isn’t as though Uncle Sam is lowering the machine arm on ye’ ole’ printing press and printing up trillions in new paper currency. Far from it. Fiat dollars are for the most part already digitized.

Yet another recent article on cryptocurrency appeared a few days back in The Atlantic, which takes a contrary tone, entitled Cryptocurrency Might Be a Path To Authoritarianism, and asks whether blockchain technology is paving the way toward a more centralized and troubling authoritarian agenda, rather than increasing people’s independence as Black argues.

The author of that piece, Ian Bogost, is right to voice a concern, arguing in part that the blockchain has the potential to unleash the kind of surveillance state apparatus few tyrants have ever dreamed of. [This article originally appeared on Steemit.com. Continue reading here …]